The Bren Ten started as a cartridge in search of a pistol. No less a subject-matter expert than the late Col. Jeff Cooper had a vision of the perfect combat-handgun cartridge: a .40-caliber, 200-grain bullet that left the muzzle at 1,000 fps. While working on this round, dubbed the .40 Super, Cooper met Thomas Dornaus and Michael Dixon in 1980. A year earlier, the two men formed Dornaus & Dixon Enterprises to develop an improved and more powerful alternative for the Government 1911.
The three men joined forces, with Cooper as an outside technical consultant. With this arrangement, Cooper’s cartridge evolved into the 10 mm. As loaded in Sweden by Norma Precision, it had a muzzle velocity of 1,200 fps, with a muzzle energy almost twice that of the .45 ACP.
The new handgun designed to launch this fireball would develop into the Bren Ten, a short-recoil, locked-breech semi-automatic inspired by the noticeably smaller 9 mm Czechoslovakian CZ 75. (“Bren” was derived from a portmanteau of the Czech city of Brno and the English arsenal town of Enfield.) But, by comparison, the Bren Ten was the Incredible Hulk version of the CZ 75.
Weighing 36 ounces, the Bren Ten featured a double-action, first-shot trigger pull (although the hammer could be manually cocked), with subsequent shots in single-action mode. Other features included a screw-in, crown-shaped barrel bushing, loaded-chamber indicator, adjustable rear sights and a selective magazine catch that permitted free-fall or partial ejection for manual removal. Another unique feature was the Power-Seal rifling, with shallow, sloped grooves for greater gripping surfaces and a tighter gas seal for the bullet. Reportedly, 10-shot groups within an inch at 25 yards were produced by the handgun.
The Bren Ten featured a stainless steel frame paired with a blued carbon-steel slide. In addition to preventing galling, it gave the pistol a distinctive two-tone look. Per Cooper’s involvement, the Gunsite raven was engraved on the frame’s left side, above the trigger. Full-size models had 5-inch barrels and a 10-round magazine. These included the flagship Standard Model, plus a special run of 250 Marksman Special Match pistols chambered in .45 ACP, which were produced for the no-longer-existing Marksman Shop of Glenview, IL. Dual-Master Presentation Models, containing an extra slide, .45 ACP barrel and innovative .45 ACP/10 mm magazine, were also available.
Special Forces Models came with 4-inch barrels and either a matte-blue slide paired with a black-oxide stainless frame, or a nickel-plated slide with a stainless frame. A 10 mm Pocket Model with a shortened eight-round magazine was planned, but only two were produced. In addition, there was a proposed version for the API (American Pistol Institute, what would become Gunsite Academy). Plus, 2,000 gold-plated laser-etched Jeff Cooper commemoratives, priced at $2,000 each, were to have been made, but apparently a total of five were manufactured.
As if the threaded barrel bushing at the muzzle wasn’t enough to ID this as a Bren Ten, the name is emblazoned on the side of the slide • In addition to the thumb safety, the Bren Ten also has a crossbolt safety on the slide • Adjacent to the lanyard loop, the bottom of the grip also reveals a setscrew to tension magazine release and an extension on the mag floorplate to unscrew the bushing.
Perhaps the biggest boost to the Bren Ten’s popularity came from its appearance in the hands (and holster)of detective Sonny Crockett (played by actor Don Johnson) during the first two seasons of the “Miami Vice” TV series, although Johnson used a SIG Sauer P220 in the show’s pilot. Two Bren Tens, chambered for .45 ACP blanks, were built for the show. Each was specially modified to artificially cycle, simulating recoil, but it wound up causing numerous malfunctions during filming and ultimately resulted in costly retakes. In addition, to enhance the on-camera appeal of these pistols, the blued slides were chromed. Needless to say, the exposure of the Bren Ten on “Miami Vice” and in the gun press resulted in an insatiable demand in spite of its hefty (for the time) $500 price tag. The first Standard Models were delivered in 1984, and that’s when trouble started.
The original magazines were made by Mec-Gar in Italy, and were capable of feeding .45 ACP and 10 mm ammo. To say they were slow in coming is an understatement. Thus, many guns were shipped without magazines, in essence making them single-shot paperweights. I remember, at the 1985 SHOT Show, hearing the constant complaint, “When will we have more Bren Ten magazines?”
Moreover, an ongoing need for cash kept the company scrambling for parts, often resulting in inferior components. Finally, the situation became insurmountable, and in 1986 Dornaus & Dixon filed for bankruptcy. While that spelled the end of the Bren Ten, it did not doom its proprietary cartridge. Colt galloped to the rescue, with the company’s beefed-up 10 mm Delta Elite 1911.
Although the 10 mm was eventually downsized to become the more controllable and popular .40 S&W, it lives on today, not only with Colt’s reintroduction of its Delta Elite, but in the Glock G20 and G29, SIG Sauer’s P320-XTen and P220, FN America’s FN510, Smith & Wesson’s M&P M2.0 and many others (it might be easier to list manufacturers who don’t offer a 10 mm semi-auto these days). And interestingly enough, there have been two attempts to revive the Bren Ten.
First, firearm enthusiast Richard Voit purchased the Bren Ten assets from bankruptcy courts, hired Dornaus as a consultant and established Peregrine Industries to recreate the Bren Ten.
In the 2000s, Vltor Weapons Systems licensed the Bren Ten name from Voit; however, attempts to produce a resurrected Bren Ten have not yet resulted in a finished product.
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